GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB, in theory, should be a small bit faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 11520 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra will be much (about 31%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9168 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra will be quite a bit (more or less 22%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2688 (22%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.